Beginning of the end

Had President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan been a less dodgy sort of fellow, it would have been possible to feel some sympathy for him. As it happens, even his friends probably feel that he had it coming to him. The simple truth is old as the hills: mixing politics with religion doesn't work. Worse, it often ends in bloodshed. Like the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984, the Lal Masjid in Islamabad had become a haven and a fortress for religious extremists. Their version of Islam, like Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale's version of Sikhism, demanded a degree of purity that was rooted in a different time and place. In some ways it was also plain wrong, as usually happens when bigots call the shots.

Just as Bhindranwale had been encouraged by the Congress party in the late 1970s in order to embarrass the Akalis, Maulana Abdul Aziz, the ranking cleric at the mosque, had also been a recipient of official patronage. In January this year he decided that the government could not remove or demolish mosques and sent about a hundred female students at the attached madarsa to occupy a children's library in the city. In March they first kidnapped three women who they said were running brothels, and then a couple of policemen. That was the first challenge to authority and it should not have gone unchallenged. But it did. Emboldened, in April the mosque set up a parallel court based on the Shariah. Again nothing was done. Abdul Aziz then took the usual vow: he would send thousands to their deaths if the government responded to this challenge.

President Musharraf continued to look on with a smile""and before he knew it, the mosque's court issued a fatwa against his minister for tourism, Niloufer Bakhtiar, for embracing a parachuting instructor after a charity jump in France. She quit because Gen. Musharraf failed to support her adequately. Finally Gen. Musharraf reacted and shut down the mosque's web site and radio station""yes, it had those too. In May, students kidnapped six more policemen who were later freed. Then, in June, nine people, including six Chinese women and a Chinese man, were kidnapped. They had been to an acupuncture clinic but the mosque claimed it was a brothel.

It was only when Beijing got into the act that President Musharraf finally stirred. On July 3, street battles started between the army and the students, and the mosque was placed under a siege. In an act of great bravery, Maulana Abdul Aziz ran off in a burqa and high heels, only to be arrested by the police. His brother, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, took over as the head of the mosque. The siege has now ended after a lot of violence which has left 60 people dead. But another siege might have well begun, this time for the President himself. Pakistan is in deep crisis (again) and Pervez Musharraf is at the centre of it. His luck seems finally to be running out because, in the last year or so, he has committed more mistakes than in the previous six. Everyone except the army has turned against him and even that support may melt away if America decides to look for an alternative.

The problem in countries that are occasional democracies and where the army is the ultimate arbiter is that alternatives do not crop up very easily. The two leading politicians are discredited in one way or another. And a successor from the army would hardly be an improvement. The risk therefore is that Pakistan could become an even more problematic neighbour.